That would mean that at this time you do not qualify for Section 121 exclusion of your capital gains on the sale of the property, because you have not owned it and occupied it as your primary residence for two of the past five years.So, your question is can you move back into the property and occupy it for two years and qualify for the Section 121 exclusion of up to the maximum limit of either $250,000 for a single taxpayer or $500,000 for a married taxpayer.The answer is that you cannot.If you move into the property for two years and qualify for Section 121 treatment, you will have two years of "qualified use," and a number of years of "non-qualified use" that would be equal to the number of years you have owned the property minus the two years of "qualified use" as a primary residence.  

Tax treatment preference?

You're seeing the damage that is visual, but without destructive testing you'll never know what the extent of the damage is inside the walls. 

Running scenarios helps me visualize how all this can work, so thank you for taking the time to put that together.Bringing a note investor to the table at the start seems like excellent advice.

If it's a request to upgrade appliances or plaint or window treatments, politely tell them they viewed it and rented it so they clearly accepted it.

Tax treatment is probably a secondary consideration.

Delaware Statutory Trusts, Tenants In Common syndications, Tenants in Common real estate ownership, as well as long term ground leases are all products that give you passive fractional ownership that still qualifies for 1031 treatment.  

The best price I've found is $49 for first treatment for cockroaches and $99 per quarter after that with a 1 year commitment. 

What I would do instead is arrange for a contractor who is familiar with lead abatement to do a walkthrough of the house, or at least whatever areas are easily accessible, and have them do a visual size-up of the property.

Even if the issue is on 2 properties out of 10, well they maybe exactly those rare opportunities that other investors overlooled.Same for Airdna or mashvisor.These tools are even dangerous because they present the results in such a nice professional way that a novice investor will trust the quality of the visuals, regardless of the quality of the underlying data that they ignore.